So, you’ve come up with the best marketing strategy to give your business the boost it needs. But here’s the twist… to achieve your goals, it looks like you need more funds, and your budget is already stretched.
If you’re in this position and need to move forward without compromising on your goals, here are some simple things you can do to get the best results possible while staying within your budget.
Your budget may not be as tight as it seems
If you think a well-executed marketing campaign requires heavy financing, think again.
Yes, a larger budget might open more doors for you to push your product or service to a larger audience, it also raises the stakes on ROI. The more you invest, the more sales you’ll need to make to generate a good return on your activity.
Examine your goals and targets and ensure they’re budget appropriate.
Make the most of what you already have
It may be time to revisit your old marketing strategies and breathe some new life into them. The process of renewing, reusing and refining existing work can be an effective tactic, if applied properly.
For efficiency and consistency, create a series of marketing assets as reusable templates that can be the basis for building future campaigns. This allows your brand to keep a consistent visual language and message across all your campaigns. You are not building from scratch each time – in essence, there is more progress for less effort.
A consistent brand image is important in building recognition and reputation in the marketplace, it is also important to ensure your brand is fresh, relevant and aligned with evolving consumer expectations. A little work on sharpening your brand image can also help to reduce marketing wastage on consumer segments less likely to convert.
Get on top of your results
To do more with less, you’ll need to focus on your strengths and weed out your weaknesses. Make sure you know the answers to these questions:
- Which campaigns resulted in a good ROI?
- Which channels did those campaigns utilise?
- What activity drove the highest converting traffic?
Review the best returns for the spend and cut down on the platforms that are not driving enough qualified traffic to your site. You can even draw insights from consumer behavior to check what resonates with your target audience and what doesn’t.
75% of companies see increased engagement when they use data-driven marketing.
Remember that your data is valuable, and going back to it can help to steer you towards the most cost-effective methods.
Recognise new sales channels
There are so many ways to get your products or services in front of your audience. Have you tried them all? With the constraints of a tight budget, you might not think this is the time for experimenting, but consumer behaviour is always changing, and keeping your eyes open for new, more cost effective channels could pay dividends.
There may be channels out there that have a more niche and targeted audience that fits your profile that you haven’t considered before, because they were too small.
Of course, whatever channels you choose, they should never run contrary to your brand and a consistent brand message and identity must be maintained.
Invest in cost-effective inbound marketing tools
When it comes to inbound marketing tools, every software promises unprecedented insights into consumer behavior and accurate tracking of results. While they are definitely helpful, it’s important to ensure you are getting the required ROI, especially since you are operating on a strict budget.
“Consider investing in inbound channels as they cost 61% less per lead on average compared to outbound lead generation.”
Brendan Wong
This is why it is important to question outcomes before investing in any advanced tool: take for instance a heat mapping tool – while it may be useful to know where your visitors are dropping off your site, you might be better off investing in an SEO optimisation tool like SEMrush to support your content marketing efforts.
Test everything: Make informed decisions on where to spend
The really good news is that there are a number of cost-effective and easy ways to test and refine your marketing campaign ideas and messages to ensure you get the best possible result. Testing as many aspects of your marketing campaign as you go can mean you can refine and hone your campaign before rolling it out across your selected channels.
Tools such as CrazyEgg and VWO give marketers the opportunity to make informed decisions based on consumer insights. Marketing is ever-evolving and what may be driving customers to you one month may be ineffective in the next. It’s a good idea to integrate regular testing into your marketing activities so you can check that your strategy and content is hitting the mark, or needs some refinement to meet a new trend.
Are you in or out?
The outsourcing industry is growing leaps and bounds as more businesses seek selected services from other suppliers instead of doing everything in-house.
In fact, over two-thirds of B2B companies outsource at least some of their marketing. Evaluate and play to your in-house team’s strengths where you can and, expand your capabilities with cost-effective outsourced skills where needed. This strategy frees you from the constraints of your in-house team’s fixed skillset and capacity, without tying you in to long term financial commitments that your budget can’t handle.
Go get ’em!
So, there you have it. Assess vigorously, be flexible with your strategies and channel choices, test and adjust as you go and ensure you’re working with suppliers who add value. Even if you feel like your back’s against the wall when it comes to budgets, with these tips you can boldy step forward and take control of your marketing destiny!
